This page is part of
our online version of all the Harper's Weekly newspapers published
during the Civil War. This archive contains a wealth of incredible
eye-witness illustrations of the War, as well as in depth analyses of
the key battles and events of the day.

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Printed from the Manuscript and
early Proof-sheets purchased by the Proprietors of "Harper's Weekly."

THE SECOND SCENE.

SKELDERGATE, YORK.

CHAPTER I.

IN that part of the city of York
which is situated on the western bank of the Ouse there is a narrow street
called Skeldergate, which runs nearly north and south, parallel with the course
of the river. The postern by which Skeldergate was formerly approached no longer
exists, and the few old houses left in the street are disguised in melancholy
modern costume of whitewash and cement. Shops of the smaller and

poorer order, intermixed here and
there with dingy warehouses and joyless private residences of red brick, compose
the present aspect of Skeldergate. On the river side the houses are separated,
at intervals, by lanes running down to the water, and disclosing lonely little
plots of open ground, with the masts of sailing barges rising beyond. At its
southward extremity the street ceases on a sudden, and the broad flow of the
Ouse, the trees, the meadows, the public walk on one bank, and the towing-path
on the other, open to view. Here, where the street ends, and on the side of it
farthest from the river, a narrow little lane leads up to the paved foot-way
surmounting the ancient Walls of York. The one small row of buildings, which is
all that the lane possesses, is composed of cheap lodging-houses, with an
opposite view, at the distance of a few feet, of a portion of the massive city
wall. This place is called Rosemary Lane. Very little light enters it; very few
people live in it; the floating population of Skeldergate passes it by; and
visitors to the Walk on the Walls, who use it as the way up or the way down, get
out of the dreary little passage as fast as they can.The door of one of the
houses in this lost corner of York opened softly on the evening of the
twenty-third of September, eighteen hundred and forty-six, and a solitary
individual of the male sex sauntered into Skeldergate from the seclusion of
Rosemary Lane. Turning northward, this person directed his steps toward the
bridge over the Ouse and the busy centre of the city. He bore the external
appearance of respectable poverty; he carried a gingham umbrella, preserved in
an oilskin case; he picked his steps with the neatest avoidance of all dirty
places on the pavement; and he surveyed the scene around him with eyes of two
different colors—a bilious brown eye on the look out for employment, and a
bilious green eye in a similar predicament. In plainer terms, the stranger from
Rosemary Lane was no other than—Captain Wragge.

Outwardly speaking, the captain
had not altered for the better since the memorable spring day when he had
presented himself to Miss Garth at the lodge-gate of Combe-Haven. The railway
mania of that famous year had attacked even the wary Wragge, had withdrawn him
from his customary pursuits, and had left him prostrate in the end, like many a
better man. He had lost his clerical appearance—he had faded with the autumn
leaves. His crape hat-band had put itself in brown mourning for its own
bereavement of black. His dingy white collar and cravat had died the death of
old linen, and had gone to their long home at the paper-maker's, to live again
one day in quires at a stationer's shop. A gray shooting jacket in the last
stage of woolen atrophy replaced the black frock-coat of former times, and, like
a faithful servant, kept the dark secret of its master's linen from the eyes of
a prying world. From top to toe every square inch of the captain's clothing was
altered for the worse; but the man himself remained unchanged—superior to all
forms of moral mildew, impervious to the action of social rust. He was as
courteous, as persuasive, as blandly dignified as ever. He carried his head as
high without a shirt collar as ever he had carried it with one. The threadbare
black handkerchief

round his neck was perfectly
tied; his rotten old shoes were neatly blacked; he might have compared chins, in
the matter of smooth shaving, with the highest church dignitary in York. Time,
change, and poverty had all attacked the captain together, and had all failed
alike to get him down on the ground. He paced the streets of York a man superior
to clothes and circumstances, his vagabond varnish as bright on him as ever.

Arrived at the bridge, Captain
Wragge stopped and looked idly over the parapet at the barges in the river. It
was plainly evident that he had no particular destination to reach, and nothing
whatever to do. While he was still loitering the clock of York Minster chimed
the half hour past five. Cabs rattled by him over the bridge, on their way to
meet the train from London at twenty minutes to six. After a moment's hesitation
the captain sauntered after the cabs. When it is one of a man's regular habits
to live upon his fellow-creatures, that man is always more or less fond of
haunting large railway stations. Captain Wragge gleaned the human field; and on
that unoccupied afternoon the York terminus was as likely a corner to look about
in as any other.

He reached the platform a few
minutes after the train had arrived. That entire incapability of devising
administrative measures for the management of large crowds which is one of the
national characteristics of Englishmen in authority, is nowhere more strikingly
exemplified than at York. Three different lines of railway assemble three
passenger mobs, from morning to night, under one roof, and leave them to raise a
travelers' riot, with all the assistance which the bewildered servants of the
company can render to increase the confusion. The customary disturbance was
rising to its climax as Captain Wragge approached the platform. Dozens of
different people were trying to attain dozens of different objects in dozens of
different directions, all starting from the same common point, and all equally
deprived of the means of information. A sudden parting of the crowd, near the
second-class carriages, attracted the captain's curiosity. He pushed his way in,
and found a decently-dressed man—assisted by a porter and a policeman—attempting
to pick up some printed bills scattered from a paper parcel which his frenzied
fellow-passengers had knocked out of his hand. Offering his assistance in this
emergency with the polite alacrity which marked his character,

"HE TUCKED HIS UMBRELLA UNDER HIS ARM, AND JOCOSELY
SPELLED HIS NAME FOR HER
FURTHER ENLIGHTENMENT."

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